Ode to My Realms pt 2
Pashen and I were always proud of My Realms. I say that, fully admitting that both of us were very invested in the website and we genuinely wanted a place on the internet where people could role play safely – as long as they fit in to our world.
It was a contradiction that we had to face with each other. I took our slogan, “The Realms are what you make them” to heart, I wanted to give the players freedom. Pashen though, thought that creativity was enhanced when given a framework. I remember clearly a fight over a player wanting to play an ice phoenix. WHY, Pashen asked, would I allow in an ice phoenix?? I hadn’t even thought this would be a problem. “Tell me of one instance where there is an ice phoenix in lore.” Of course, there isn’t one. So the change had to be made.
Most of the time we worked on either refining that framework or making sure that people adhered to the framework. I don’t know why, but it must be in human nature to poke at rules to find cracks. For those that got what we were doing, MR was a wonderful place. For those that wanted to role play as impossible creatures, they were asked to move along.
Here is what a person would see upon arrival that first time at MyRealms in 2017 and 2018. As you can see, we had been trying to find a way to hurry along registration, our thought was to have a Gateway Chat, where people could chat freely. It would have been a big step because it meant that more people would have been at the site with less of a framework. For the first time, we were willing to let go of some of our control if we could get people registered faster. The thought was, we would have an open ‘world’ that people could then expand beyond.
About 2010, we were asked to do more than just Dungeons and Dragons style fantasy. We came up with the Outer Realms. They were a fun distraction. Seems like I might have done the Sci-Fi one first, followed by Horror, then Fantasy, and finally Steampunk and Western. Clearly I got better at the graphics as I went along. There is a comic book style one, too. But, I was never keen on opening us up to Fan Fiction. That worry was all me. While in school, my professors harped endlessly on the importance of using only your own work. Which is why, with only a few exceptions, every graphic done on the websites were done by either Pashen or me.
Hopefully now that we’ll be starting over in some way, I’ll have time to design a new look for us. No matter what, though, it will remain cream and green.
